Rysard Kapuscinski's Stone Reviewed on Bookslut

Andrew Wessels writes that Ryszard Kapuscinski's I Wrote Stone "...touches upon the great fear of death with a surprisingly unbiased touch even as the lines are imbued with emotion by the reader, who knows the inevitability and is faced with a posthumous message from beyond."

The complete review can be found here.

Kapuscinski's I Wrote Stone & the L.A. Times

An article about Ryszard Kapuscinski's I Wrote Stone appeared on the LA Time's Book Blog yesterday. The whole thing can be read here:

latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/03/kapuscinskithe.html

Here's an excerpt:

Although there was much fanfare around the appearance of Kapuściński's final book, "Travels With Herodotus," which was published not long after his death, it's disappointing that "I Wrote Stone," now published in English for the first time by Biblioasis, has come out with not so much as a single trumpet sounding.

Translated by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba, this slim volume gathers poetry Kapuściński wrote over 40 years. Slim, yes, but hardly insubstantial.

Big events -- such as the murder of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba -- may have been treated lyrically in his prose, but Kapuściński's translators note that he believed poetry could "illuminate dimensions of human experience that otherwise would remain unknowable." These poems capture the moments between crises, impressions that carry a book-length argument in a few lines. ... I Wrote Stone shows us a chronicler of chaos in one of those moments when he has turned off his journalistic processes and given himself up to something else.

This follows last week's publication of the poem In Lieu of a Prayer in the Guardian (where it may soon be reviewed). Finally we seem to be getting somewhere.

Kapuscinski and Translation at This Ain't the Rosedale / The Photography of Andre Kertesz

A few photos from the Kapuscinski I Wrote Stone/ Biblioasis International Translation Series Launch. I need to learn to take a better picture.

The event really was wonderful. Stephen Henighan gave an impassioned introduction on the need for translation, which I'll be posting here in the next day or two. Al Moritz read from the poetry of French surrealist Benjamin Peret. Goran Simic read two new prose poems, possibly from his upcoming Tattooed Land (hard to know, as I've not yet seen the ms). Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba did an exceptional job reading Kapuscinski's poems, both in Polish and in english. Diana's reading was superb. She quite skilled, eloquent, engaged, and gave I thought one of the best readings we've had at Biblioasis. Hopefully we'll get her out a few more times yet.

A good crowd of 60-70 people were in attendance. Leon Rooke showed up, and we announced the winner of the Metcalf-Rooke Award. The winner, Rebecca Rosenblum, was also in attendance. It was wonderful to be able to announce the award in a meaningful fashion with the winner present. It made the announcement more real and immediate.

It was also nice to meet Priscilla Uppal, who's made it to other Biblioasis events in the past, though I've never had the chance to meet her. Branko Gorjup was also present, as was Barry Callaghan, of Exile, though he left so damn fast I never got the chance to introduce myself.

Branko and Leon are the reason Biblioasis received the book. They suggested that Diana and Marek send it to us, after other presses turned it down, largely, I gather, because it was not a Canada Council eligible title. Dan and Charlie at This Ain't the Rosedale were gracious hosts, and kept the doors open late for us. I, alas, forgot my stash of remainders behind their counter, but perhaps will be able to pick them up the week after next, when I'm next in Toronto.

Spent the night at the GLadstone, which was nice, and the four hours before my train touring a few galleries with Tony Calzetta, a Windsor-born artist I've hooked up with through Metcalf, and someone I'm hoping to do a book on in the next couple of years. Hit a few gallery shows, most of which were disappointing. Though I did see the work of Dan Kennedy, a dada-ist influenced artist -- or so says his catalogue -- who merges 19th century typography, and freak show/travelling road show imagery in a rather surreal, powerful collage. I think his work would make excellent cover illustrations, and intend to search him out to see how interested he'd be in a project or two.

The highlight, however, was a photography exhibit, of the work of Andre Kertesz. I'd not heard of him before, though he was internationally renowned. This show was of his Polaroids, which goes to show that it's not the instrument but the man using it. The work was breathtaking, beautiful. Consisting mainly of still lifes, shots taken around his apartment, or through his window, the way he captured light, or honed in on an image was quite amazing. In the best of them there was a near abstract quality, where the object dissolved into light and colour and line. Kertesz started using the Polaroid camera late in life, in his mid-80s, when he was more and more confined to his house due to infirmity, and when he could no longer develop film in a darkroom due to vertigo.

The show runs at the Bulger Gallery on Queen St. until late December. I may head back when I'm in Toronto the week after next. If I had $4000, I'd have bought one of them. As it is, I really couldn't afford the book I purchased. But viewing them at the Bulger is free. I urge everyone who can to do so.

Q&Q on Biblioasis, the TINY Windsor-based press

Quill & Quire write up Biblioasis's acquisition of Ryszard Kapuscinski's poetry collection. Note the word tiny. Is this smaller than a micro-press, but larger than a bread box? Or smaller than a small press, larger than a micro-press? (What I long for is the current adjective-in-favour: independent. As in: non-conglomerate. Sets up a nice David and Goliath storyline, without the negative associations of tiny, don't you think? Though we don't want to look too closely at how independent most of us tiny to small presses are, now do we? We might have to find another adjective that's not quite so ego-salving.

At least they didn't call Windsor the perineum of Canada, as a certain editor at Bookninja has recently done (he should know, when he comes to Windsor in November, I'll make sure that line is offered up to warm up the crowd. {Perineum? What the !#%*'s a perineum?})

Which would make Sarnia and Toronto what exactly, George?

So ... the Q&Q Omni piece ...


Biblioasis, a tiny press based in Windsor, Ontario, recently scored the North American rights to the first English translation of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s poetry, which will be published this fall. But despite the late Polish journalist and author's international renown, Biblioasis publisher and owner Daniel Wells didn’t have to work hard to get the title. “It came in the mail,” Wells said.


The collection’s Canadian translators, Marek Kubisa and Diana Kuprel, had shopped the book around to a few other publishers, but found none willing to take on the expense of a translation. So she tried Biblioasis after hearing about the press from a colleague.


Biblioasis, meanwhile, published two translated works by Goran Simic last year and was looking to launch an official international translation series. The Kapuscinski collection – which now bears the title I Wrote Stone, changed from the earlier The Things of This Earth – will be released in September.


Although the Canada Council for the Arts funds literary translation, it does so mainly between French and English, for works by Canadian authors. Which means projects like the Kapuscinski title are out of luck. “The fact that Biblioasis picked it up despite that, I thought, was pretty incredible,” Kuprel said.


For his part, Wells said that “[international translation] is very much a direction we’re going to be going in,” because he thinks it could raise Biblioasis’s profile. Wells said he hopes to publish at least one translation per season, and has lined up author Stephen Henighan to serve as series editor. Possible future titles include a novel about the Angolan civil war, written by an African-Portuguese writer named Ondjaki and translated by Henighan; and a German-language novel called Kahn and Engelmann: A Family Saga by Canadian scholar and author Hans Eichner, which will likely be partially funded by a grant from the Austrian government.


After Kuprel offered the Kapuscinski collection to Biblioasis, the publisher formally bought the rights from Kapuscinski’s agent, Marianne Fritsch of the Zurich-based Liepman Literary Agency. Wells said that before Kapuscinski’s death, “he made it very clear this was something he wanted to see translated into English … so the money wasn’t really a concern. Which was good for us!